1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of electronic calendar systems. More specifically, the present invention is related to an integrated matching service and electronic calendar system.
The following definitions may assist in the understanding of terminology used throughout the specification:                calendar component—collections of properties which define a particular calendar semantic.        event—activity or occasion, such as a meeting, an anniversary, a tennis match, etc., in which an entity participates directly, indirectly, or peripherally and is the item or criteria to be matched.        calendar event—a calendar event of the present invention is synonymous with a calendar component, i.e. it includes a to-do, journal entry, etc and may represent an event in the electronic calendaring system.        requirements—a possible attachment to a calendar event which represents the requirements that any entity or separate calendar event must meet in order to be a successful match.        attributes—a possible attachment to a calendar event which represents the profile/preferences of the entity which corresponds to the calendar event.        attendees—property of a calendar event which contains the identity of the entity or entities which have matched the calendar event.        
2. Discussion of Prior Art
Electronic calendar systems are a widely used resource in today's society. Electronic calendar systems contain information about events, such as what the event is, when the event will occur, and where it will occur. Attributes about the owner of a calendar, where the owner may be a person, a community organization, or business, are contained in the calendaring systems. Attributes describe the owner and the owner's preferences. Use of calendar systems help an owner manage their time, provide reminders to the owner, and allow an owner to summarize events that occurred on a specified date.
Some calendaring systems additionally provide for a scheduling system. In one example of scheduling, an entity defines a meeting and invites attendees. Traditional scheduling systems then locate free slots for the participants and schedules the meeting. In another example, a service, such as a maid service, uses the calendaring system to schedule their cleaning staff with the houses that need to be cleaned. As can be seen by both of these examples, the scheduling system coordinates the activities between known participants. An originator of the meeting invites specific attendees. There is a prior knowledge of the staff of the maid service and the houses which need to be cleaned.
In addition, there are traditional services, such as dating services, bulletin board services, job placement services, classified ads, etc., that attempt to pair parties with similar interest together. All of these services address pairing parties together, where the parties define some criteria for a successful match. These services may involve just two parties, or involve a facilitator, where the facilitator can play a passive or active role. Varying degrees of automation, e.g., keyword searching of a resume, matching these keywords to job positions, etc., may be implemented in these services. For the different services, the criteria defined is quite different. For instance, the criteria for a dating service is quite different from the criteria required for job placement services. Due to this fact, when the services are substantially fully automated, the criteria stored in the databases is stored in a format that is efficient with respect to the specific service and limited thereto. For this reason, the particular services only practice one category of pairing (e.g. either job placement or dating), or if a certain service happens to provide more than one category, the categories are separate with separate databases. In addition, the different automated service providers typically utilize proprietary technology to provide the automation, therefore, there is no capability for interconnection of the service providers, i.e., a provider of a dating service cannot be interconnected to a provider job placement services.
While some of the services attempt to pair parties having similar interest, they typically do not provide for pairing parties having similar interest for specific events. Many times an individual may desire to find someone who has a similar interest and who would be able to engage in that interest at a particular time. For instance, one individual may be an intermediate tennis player who desires to play on a specific day and time. However, that individual has no knowledge of others who play tennis and are available at that time. Therefore, the individual would like to seek out someone unknown to them who also plays tennis at an intermediate level and can play at the specified time and date. Traditional pairing services would not be of help to the individual, as they typically could only pair the individual with another individual having an interest in tennis, but cannot guarantee their time schedules would be compatible. Similarly, for two parties wishing to engage in some form of commerce, such as the pairing of customer and service provider, or buyer and seller, is often a random process only slightly facilitated by advertising.
The present invention eliminates the foregoing disadvantages by integrating both the time scheduling capabilities of a calendar system and the efficient matching functions of pairing services in one homogeneous application that is powerful for many users, organizations and types of services. These and other objects are achieved by the detailed description, drawings and claims.